Chapter 5

Aboard Continental Airlines Flight 8226
Over the Atlantic Ocean

It was an eight-hour flight to Gatwick Airport, where we would have to switch planes to fly on to Scotland. We would not arrive in Inverness until seven in the morning, local time.

I was already exhausted, but determined to stay awake, fearing sleep and the possibilities of experiencing a night terror while on the plane. With the ongoing threat of terrorist attacks still keeping most Western travelers on edge, I knew that one bloodcurdling scream at forty thousand feet might result in an intense, free-for-all beating.

With Max snoring next to me, I remained awake, sobriety forcing me to think. Avoiding all thoughts of the Sargasso, I tried focusing my mind on Scotland, a land I scarcely remembered.

My mother had barely been out of college when she traveled to Britain with two friends and first laid eyes on my father. Angus Wallace was brash and handsome and larger-than-life to twenty-six-year-old Andrea McKnown, and the fact that she had recently lost her father and Angus was twenty-seven years her senior no doubt added to her infatuation. Their courtship lasted barely six weeks before he insisted they marry. Andrea said yes, partly because there was nothing waiting for her back home, partly because she was pregnant and couldn't bear to face her mother, a strict Catholic. To this day, mom still insists I was born nine weeks prematurely instead of only three.

My mother put up with a lot during those early years, and, over time, as the glitter of her infatuation gradually faded, she began to see my father for what he truly was, an irresponsible drunk who loved to flirt as much as he liked to drink. I kept my father's affairs from my mother as long as I could, but after nearly drowning, I'd confessed everything I knew. Biding her time, my mother waited until Angus's next "business trip," then sold our cottage and its furnishings, packed our bags, and filed for divorce. By the time Angus returned from Inverness, a new family had moved into his dwelling, and Mom and I were living in her mother's home on Long Island, New York.

That was the last time I saw my father or Scotland, and I was surprised at how anxious I felt to see the Highlands again. Perhaps Angus was right when he said, "Born a Highlander, aye a Highlander, oor blood bleeds the plaid."

* * *

Scottish identity comes from both the land and its history, and its history, like most of Europe's, is a bloody one. Separated from continental Europe by the North Sea, Scotland forms the northern boundary of Great Britain, attached to England's northern hip, and our people have always been in conflict with our neighbor to the south—a people greater in number and wealth and more advanced, especially in the art of warfare. Coexisting with the English has been our greatest challenge, and remains so, even today.